Benicia Council votes against cannabis on First Street and Downtown

BENICIA >> The City Council voted unanimously at Tuesday night’s meeting to bar cannabis dispensaries from First Street and the downtown area.

The decision about whether or not to have them on First Street was handled separately from the rest of the city because of zoning issues with the downtown mixed-use master plan. Councilmember Alan Schwartzman also had to recuse himself from discussions of the area since he is a property owner in the vicinity. Should the council have voted to allow dispensaries on First Street, Schwartzman would have had to recuse himself from all other deliberations about pot elsewhere, and that could impact any final vote.

The meeting was packed with people who showed up to give their opinions during the public comment portion, with the overflow rooms being employed to handle the turnout. The majority of people who spoke about cannabis businesses on First Street opposed the idea, as many of them expressed concern with the message it would send to the city’s youth and how it could change the family-friendly draw of downtown.

Resident Pamela Chalk addressed the council and said that having a cannabis shop on a parade route wouldn’t support the hometown vibe she loves and supports.

Patrice Heller gave an impassioned plea about the safety of children in the community and the danger of drugs.

“I’m really worried,” she told the council.

Heller asked the council to consider ancillary costs of allowing legal pot in town. “Experimenting and exposing our children so closely to risky health consequences” is not worth any tax revenue, she said.

Several high school students who belong to Friday Night Live, a group that creates anti-drug messages and raises awareness about issues that can affect teens, all spoke out against the proposed ordinance. Some said that they didn’t think their parents would allow them to go downtown anymore out of fears of safety. Others expressed concerns about peer pressure and an increase in crime.

But some people spoke in support of the proposed ordinance. Jacob Brown told the council that he was never very interested in cannabis until he developed brain cancer at 29. He felt that it was a right of anyone to be able to have access to a substance that “gives you an appetite and a sense of hope, maybe … It’s too late to be afraid and it’s time for a paradigm shift,” he said. “This plant is a good thing in a universe that does not care about us. What matters is how we treat each other.”

Two representatives from the medical marijuana Agathist Collective also showed up to support the resolution.

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“I’m here to challenge the idea that it doesn’t belong downtown,” said co-founder Timothy Byers. “They are no different than other businesses.”

He addressed the fears that it would bring in a “bad element.”

“I think what they’ll see is happy, healthy, well-adjusted people entering and leaving a cannabis shop,” he said. He added that it’s the “height of hypocrisy” to single out pot when there are bars on First Street.

Most of the arguments against dispensaries came from parents or educators. Superintendent Dr. Charles Young said that having a dispensary would make marijuana “abundantly and readily available to the youth of this fine town,” which prompted Councilmember Tom Campbell to respond.

“My problem is that you said, ‘readily available.’ I’ve heard that phrase over and over again (tonight).” He noted that the age would be 21, not 15. Campbell said that allowing legal pot in town wouldn’t increase their access to illegal sources of cannabis. “I don’t think.”

He also pointed out that people will be able to grow up to six plants themselves, regardless of the town’s regulations. “So there will be more marijuana, period,” he said.

Then the council entered into the murky area of data and studies that show crime rates and whether or not legalized marijuana has increased usage in young people who live in states that have decriminalized it.

Both council members Mark Hughes and Steve Young coined the phrase, “dueling studies” on impacts, but it wasn’t far off the mark. For every study you find that says that usage or crime increases around dispensaries, there are just as many that say the opposite. From the research that the Times-Herald has done, there hasn’t been enough time that has passed to definitively get answers yet. And many of the studies use a small sample or leave out important factors.

For example, Hughes pointed to a study that said that use was up among Colorado teens in the wake of legalization. But FactCheck.org also vetted the study and found many inaccuracies, including the assertion that usage is way up. In fact in some instances the numbers have gone down since 2009.

In the end of all the comments and deliberations, none of the council members approved allowing dispensaries downtown.

“I’m going to vote no,” Campbell said.

Mayor Elizabeth Patterson also said she was going to vote against it, but “not because I believe in all the fears and expressions; I don’t,” she said.

Patterson said she knew that perceptions needed to change before something like a dispensary downtown would go over well in town, and she has “confidence in that evolution.”

Councilmember Steve Young supported the idea at first, thinking it would be a “net benefit to merchants due to increased foot traffic,” but on Tuesday night he said he’d “evolved” on that issue and acknowledged that First Street is “different” and “does represent the heart of the community.” Young also mentioned the fact that 55 percent of respondents to the city survey said they did not want it downtown.

As for Mark Hughes, his vote was not a surprise. He has stated clearly that he does not support any cannabis shops in Benicia, though in the past he said that he doesn’t judge people who use it and he believes it has medicinal properties.

“I’ve been very consistent with my position on this that I’m not interested in having dispensaries anywhere in Benicia but especially on First Street,” he said. “We’ve worked hard creating a safe and family-friendly environment on First Street. Adding dispensaries would work totally against that. It would ruin what we took so many years to create.”

The unanimous decision was met with applause from some in the audience.

Originally, the council was set to continue with a discussion of dispensaries and the like elsewhere in town, but time constraints have pushed that debate onto the agenda of the meeting on Dec. 19.

Since Schwartzman will no longer have to recuse himself, that will leave all five with that decision in their hands.